Bharti Airtel Q2 net profit drops 29% to Rs. 512 crore

Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Wednesday reported a 29 per cent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs. 512 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2013, mainly on account of increase in finance cost and Forex losses due to rupee depreciation.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs. 721.2 crore for the same period in last financial year.

“The continued depreciation of the Indian rupee has resulted in Forex restatement and derivative losses of Rs. 342 crore versus Rs. 25 crore loss for Q2, FY’13. Consequently, the consolidated net income came at Rs. 512 crore, as against Rs. 721 crore in the corresponding quarter last year,” Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

The company’s consolidated net debt has reduced to $9,697 million resulting in the net debt to EBITDA ratio (in U.S. dollar terms) at 2.18 times as compared to 2.59 times at the end of the same quarter last year, it added.

The consolidated revenues of the company, however, grew by 10 per cent to Rs. 21,342.8 crore from Rs. 19,408.5 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

Bharti Airtel saw 100 per cent increase in its revenue from the mobile Internet segment at Rs. 1,503 crore, accounting for 39.1 per cent of the overall incremental revenue.

“Mobile Internet is now a major engine of growth for Airtel across all geographies,” Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in the statement.

The company had last month increased rates of mobile internet by about 25 per cent and reduced benefits under certain schemes by about 50 per cent.

Airtel saw 28.8 per cent increase in revenue of Digital TV and 20.8 per cent in airtel business (B2B) division. International revenues of the company grew by 17.9 per cent on yearly basis in rupee terms with Africa growing by 16.1 per cent Y-o-Y and South Asia by 54.4 per cent.

The voice usage per customer increased by 20 minutes per month to 437 minutes in the reported quarter from 417 minutes in the second quarter of FY’2013, the company said.

Airtel saw increase in data usage per customer by 98 megabytes to 231 MBs in Q2 FY’14, from 133 MBs in Q2 FY’13.

The average revenue of the company per customer moved up by Rs. 15 to Rs. 192 during the reported quarter, it said.

Shares of Bharti Airtel were trading at Rs. 355.40, up by 4.22 per cent, on BSE after announcement of results in morning hours.